I think most people know the lengths that pharmaceutical companies will go to get their drugs out there to more people. Accusations of disease mongering, or making healthy people think they're sick to sell them prescription drugs, have been around for a long time. Generally, a drug company will target the media with scary information about a particular problem which is intended to make people think they're sick when they're really not, and then they go and buy the drug that solves this non-existent problem.

I also think that most people realize that the major pharmaceuticals are the biggest lobbying force in Washington, which, of course, has led to many favorable laws and bills over the years. This culminated with our new medicare bill, which the drug companies paid $141 million in lobbying to get passed. According to the senior researcher for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch that amount of access led to, "The revolving door between the White House and [the pharmaceutical lobbyists] has made the Bush administration indistinguishable from the industry."

Another extremely common occurrence, unknown by most people, is the same drug companies buying doctors lunch while they talk about their latest drugs, and then buying those doctors free office supplies, bearing the name and logo of their drugs, and giving them free samples of their drugs to give to people before finally finishing buying the doctors off with free trips and gifts for the doctors who prescribe certain amounts of their drugs.

However, despite all of that, what I didn't know about, nor did I suspect, is that the drug companies have also been financing many patient groups, which are supposed to be "grassroots organizations representing the interests of people with serious diseases." When I recently read this in my copy of New Scientist I can't say that I was shocked, but I was really disgusted that the drug companies have seemingly infiltrated each and every place that people can get information about their health at this point. Something simply has to be done. People can't trust their doctors, because they might be in the drug companies pockets. They certainly can't trust the media or the government, because they were both bought a long time ago. Now, it seems, they can't even trust many patient groups.